Wood Burned Nativity Blocks

On the 2nd day of Christmas… I’m sharing a hand carved nativity block set for my nephew. (Check out the other 11 days HERE)

Is everyone recovering from Christmas nicely? We’re home from my brother’s house and I’m ready to share my next DIY Christmas present. My brother’s son is also my Godson and he’s 20 months old. I figured he needed a nice sturdy nativity set that he couldn’t break. There are a bunch of block nativity sets on Pinterest and I planned on making one by decoupaging images onto wood. But after I bought my wood burning tool and made the cutting board and spoon set for my mom, I decided to burn the nativity images onto wood blocks instead. And by blocks I mean scrap 2×3 and 2×4 lumber I had lying around.

There is a way to transfer images onto wood, but I didn’t have time to figure that out because I started this project on Dec. 23 after my family had gone to bed for the night. So I had to draw the images on the block in pencil freehand. That might not be scary to some of you, but I am definitely NOT an artist, so I used these images from KPM Doodles as a reference. Over the past month I’ve done so much research for nativity images, I think I’m going to have to write a whole separate post on good nativity printables.

Making Nativity Blocks

I started with Mary for no particular reason. Remember (1)* I am not an artist and (2)* I just started wood burning for the first time about an hour before carving Mary. So what I’m trying to say… you can totally do this too! I got all this done the first night.I did the last wise man and the shepherd the next day, which was Christmas Eve.After I finished opening presents with my husband and kids yesterday {OMG that feels like a million years ago}, I made the manger. I burned Christmas 2013 into it with hopes that he would play with this for years and maybe pass it down to his kids. We’ll see. Then took the whole set outside for a photo shootI think the present went over fairly well. My brother and sister-in-law loved it and my bro was pretty surprised I made it myself (due to our family’s lack of artistic ability). BUT my nephew is at the throwing stage right now. So while he wouldn’t break the nativity set, he almost broke a window and took out my mom when he started chucking the pieces across the room. There’s always next year!